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Have you ever noticed that offspring often look a little like both of their parents? A puppy might have the same colour fur as its mother but have a face that looks more like its father. When living things reproduce they pass on characteristics to their offspring. This is known as inheritance.

There are some key characteristics that we inherit from our birth parents. These include your eye colour, skin colour, shape of your ears and whether you can roll your tongue or not.

While we inherit some characteristics from our parents, there are many differences between us too. Emmet explains inheritance in this video.

All living things produce offspring of the same kind but the offspring are rarely identical to the parents. There are variations which make them different.

We don't inherit everything from our parents. For example, things like hairstyles, scars and ear piercings are not passed on.

Identical twins are often very similar to look at. If you have a brother or sister and aren't an identical twin you are still likely to be very similar, but you are probably not identical. This is because different offspring from the same parents don't inherit the same mix of characteristics.

These differences are called variation.

Let's make a family tree of characteristics to show how inheritance works.

This could be of your family, or a celebrity family if you prefer.

Try to find a picture of each person and list their characteristics underneath them.